PriorBlog

The best thing about this little site is seeing how it ranks on search engines for specific phrases.  It’s become a little lesson in search engine optimization for me.  Well, not really, but one thing I like about it is how far up in google it has gotten my name.  It’s not that I want to be famous, I just want to be the most well known David Prior.  Some of the other David Priors I am up against: a preacher, an avant-garde composer, the guy that took Robert Gates’ place at Texas A&M when Gates became Secretary of Defense, some lawyer in Philadelphia, an embattled British pol, and some guy who works in films.  The flip side of this is that the more visible this site gets, the less likely I will ever be able to land another job.  In light of this, I would just like to send a message to any future employer who might be reading this, I have been working my balls off lately, staying up late on four different projects, plus my day job.  Consider what is more important to you: your hurt feelings over my calling the Dalai Lama a CIA backed fraud or having somebody who is such a hard worker he barely has time for his poor blog?  Good.  I’d like to start at $800k.

Last night Clark came over for dinner.  As usual, he also brought a bunch of stuff for me to read.  Most notably, the latest Tom Wolfe book I am Charlotte Simmons I think it’s called.  From what I recall, the book got lukewarm reviews at best, and after reading the reviews I pretty much decided I would never read the book.  But… Having the book in my hand reminded me of what it was like reading Man in Full.  It was damn fun!  That fun that I had, the sudden memory of it in the unexpected presence of Charlotte Simmons, came bullying itself into my mind, shoving aside all of those reviewers with their appetite for LITERATURE, and informed me that yes, I could in fact love the book if I wanted to.  So then I got it into my head that I would read it, only when, who knows.  I am still chipping away at Proust, halfway through Cities on the Plain.  Estimated time of completion for the series looks like June, and who knows what sort of whims I’ll be entertaining then.  Plus, there is no time, especially not since pretty soon, I am late starting already, I will be riding my bike into work, which means that my reading time on the 34E will be literally, if you think about it, out the window.
 
Speaking of the 34E, last night while we were on Washington Street my fellow passengers and I were witnesses to a man who was supposedly shot.  He was lying on the street, the traffic behind him stopped as a woman had halted them lest he get hit by another car.  Yes, he was hit by a car and shot.  We heard all about it from a kid who ran onto the bus and breathlessly gave us the details of the incident.  As best I can make out they went something like this.  They were crossing the street when a car hit his friend, who was the man prone in the middle of the street.  Somebody inside the car got upset for some reason, maybe the hit guy said something nasty to him after being hit.  Then, the storyteller said, there were gunshots from the occupants of the vehicle, and he ran away.  Somebody said to him, you mean you left your friend all alone, to which he responded (as if responding to his friend) “I ain’t gonna stick around and get shot which you.”  Despite the severity of the situation, this comment elicited a fair amount of laughs.  The kid then told about how after escaping from the gunfire he turned around to see that the bus was approaching, which he considered really bad luck, because the reason they were crossing the street in the first place was to get the 34E.  More laughs, a real comedy show at this point.  Luckily, the gunman’s car sped off just in time for him to run back to the stop and get on to tell us everything that happened before he got off about a half mile down the road.  I’ve been checking the police blotter for an explanation.  None yet.   
 
   
 

I have mixed emotions about hearing that Cheney almost pulled a Spike Dubbs in Kabul.  Most people probably wish he got it, and that’s understandable.  I was feeling this way when I heard the news, but then I thought about what would happen if the news report this morning was “Dick Cheney has been killed.”
 
First there would be the overall freakout, and just like when those Blackwater guys got massacred in Fallujah, there would undoubtedly be an overwhelming (read disproportionate) response by the US, hundreds of innocent people barbequed with white phosphorous, corralled and shot to pieces by AC-130’s, etc, etc. 
 
I can just see Cheney right now demanding such actions.  Probably, as with horses and hand grenades, close enough is good enough.  Okay, so that wouldn’t be the worst thing if they got him, because that’s probably going to happen now anyway.

No the worst thing would be the eulogies that we would have to hear ad infinitum.  A politician dies and all of the sudden they’re great with a capital G.  In terms of history though, nothing has the transformative power that assassination does.  Look at what it did for Lincoln and Kennedy.  I fear what it would do for Cheney, or rather, what it would do to us for Cheney.

Better for him to die via some type of humorous pratfall, like falling into a manhole or something.  That would insure the necromancers’ inability to conjure any type of bullshit about a supposed legacy.

Sorry to get all political on your ass.  We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Neglect! Who says I neglect anything. Certainly not my little website here. Sure I’ve been busy, but I have a few minutes to spare and instead of sparing them I am devoting them to my internet friend(s).

Got to go to Jared Dudley and Sean Marshall’s final home game on Saturday (barring an NIT bid). Some things happened to me before the game, an epiphany of sorts, coming from the mouth of a 14 year old. I can’t get too into it, but I will say this: I will be going to more games next year than I did this year, and I will be going for free. There is a way. I have been given the secret key to the building, but that’s all I will say about it for now. I don’t think they are going to be that good next year anyway.

There is this dancing troup (or is it troop?) that comes out during the first media timeout of the second half. A bunch of female BC students in halter tops mimicing background dancers of a Britney Spears (no relation to Shamari Spears) video. The thought occured to me as they were gyrating, I wonder what percentage of them are Philosophy majors. My mind couldn’t pull itself from the notion that the answer was 0%. It’d be cool if BC required all male phD students in philosophy to have a dance squad as well. First I would like to see the school really improve its standing in the field of philosophy, you know, bring in the big guns so that everybody would want to study there, and then when they were interviewing, when they were just about to accept an entrance into this elite institution, they would be informed that the only hitch was that they would have to do a half nude halftime dance during basketball games. The gripping inner tension, it be like Soren mulling over Regina, it would be intense, and ultimately would lead to a incredible breakthroughs in metaphysics. Oh, yes, this I am quite sure of.

It would be kind of fun to watch as well, especially if one of those dudes was your TA. Think about it.

Anyhow, this is the type of crap post you get when I really have no time on my hands. What if I did all posts in under 7 minutes? Could be a new type of blog, a speed blog, like blitz chess.

There’s been a lot of talk in Boston over the past twenty-four hours or so about how great a basketball player Dennis Johnson was. I respect the right of Celtics fans to mourn their player, but what gets me is the almost gleeful proclamations heard in their eulogies that DJ “shut down” Andrew Toney. I guess I’ll have to get out the old tapes to see if that’s really true. From what I remember, Toney was called the “Boston Strangler” for a reason.

Hearing Toney put down gets me personally, because he is one of my favorite all time players. This wasn’t always the case. (Very generic “my favorite sports figure growing up” beginning coming up, but bear with me, it won’t be what you expect.) Like most kids growing up around Philly in the late seventies early eighties, my favorite basketball player was Dr. J. If he wasn’t the best player in the NBA, he was certainly the coolest with all the dunks and stuff.

Then I think people liked Dawkins, followed by Malone of course. After that there was Maurice Cheeks and Andrew Toney, and then the Joneses, etc.

I forget what year of basketball camp it was that I got to meet Andrew Toney, but I do remember that he visited us a few days after Leon Wood. It was at the beginning of Leon Wood’s career, and we didn’t really didn’t know much about what to expect from him. He came across as very serious and extremely focused. I remember him telling us that when we were practicing shooting, to never leave the court without making your last shot. I rarely pick up a basketball anymore, but when I do, I still always make the last shot, not so much to become a better player, but so as not to disappoint Leon, wherever he is (I think he’s an NBA ref these days.). A few years later one of the other lawyers in my dad’s law firm got to play in a pick up game with Wood. A few seconds into the game the barrister’s finger was nearly broken on a pass from Leon Wood. Supposedly, Leon apologized saying, “Uh, sorry, pro pass.” This became a favorite refrain whenever my dad and I were shooting hoops and there was an errant or dropped pass.

Bottom line is, Leon Wood was an intense guy. You can imagine then, if Leon Wood was intense, what we were expecting from Andrew Toney, who was a major contributor to the Sixers 82-83 World Championship team. A team who, it should be added, finished the season with more wins than any Celtic team EVER has.

The setting of basketball camp was like most camps: rudimentary wooden cabins alongside a lake in the valley of some green hills, far away from the mechanized order of the outside world. Truth be told, we didn’t even use game clocks. The Northern King Bird’s ree-ree-pee-tee-tee meant the end of regulation; such was the natural law we followed at the camp. However, like all other biological relationships, that of the nature and camper was reciprocal, meaning events within the camper community had an effect also on the community of fish and birds, raccoons and squirrels, and whoever else unexpectedly spent that summer watching boys play basketball. Never was this more evident than on the day when Andrew Toney’s vehicle finally pulled up to the camp. Not one bird dared to let out so much as a tweet, the fish so often seen leaping in the lake remained perfectly still, and the trees no longer swayed in the gentle breeze, because the gentle breeze stood at attention, and all of this was because we were so scared of Andrew Toney.

One of the counselors came out to greet Toney. He asked him how he was doing and Toney, who was all smiles, said he was doing fine except for his ankle, which he injured during the basketball season and hadn’t fully recovered.

We made our way over to the basketball court, where all of the campers sat down along the baseline, and Toney stood in the lane. A ball was tossed feebly toward Toney. He set it familiarly in his hands no more than six feet from the hoop. Somebody called out for him to take a shot. A ripple of approval went through the crowd, yeah take a shot Mister Toney. He squared his shoulders to the hoop, then stopped with a smile, pointed to his injured ankle and said, “sorry guys, doctors orders.”

I pictured Leon Wood with his leg having been ripped off by a bobcat, continuing to shoot until he got in that last shot. When Leon Wood was at camp, he drilled a camper on the pick and roll over and over until the kid was so tired he had to be medivacced back to Philly. Toney, on the other hand, languidly assessed his audience, finally settling on a camper who we thought would be used to demonstrate how to throw a bounce pass or something.

The kid stood up and made his way over to the pro. Toney pointed at the kid.

“Pull my finger.”

The kid obliged, and Toney let loose with a fart.

Good old Andre Toney!

I tried to figure out what year this happened via wikipedia, and in the course of failing to do so saw that Andrew Toney’s son Channing is playing for the Georgia Bulldogs.  I think I’ll pull for them in the SEC tourney.  I guess the sad postscript to the story is that Andrew Toney’s injury turned out to be the stress fractures that severely limited his ability to play during his final years as a pro.  Even though he was in the frustrating twillight of his career, he spent the day at a basketball camp during the off-season, and instead of moping or being a sullen creep, put on a comedy show.

1. I went to the grocery store to pick up some OJ for my poor sick kid, and on the way out I picked up a copy of the Boston Phoenix. I always grab free papers, even the Falun Gong one. Anyhow, as you probably know, the Phoenix has an affiliate radio station WFNX.

FNX is a cheesey commercial station that prides itself on being “cutting edge.” They are always trumpeting the fact that they play new music. In fact, in their full page as in the Phoenix, in big letters are the words “NEW MUSIC. FIRST.”

Let’s dissect. First “sentence.” New Music. On the right hand side of the advertisement there is a list of twenty-two bands. Nine of them were huge when I was in college. That makes what percentage of their new music new? Some of these bands were even big in the mid 80’s. U2?!?! U2 played at Live Aid. They may as well include goddamned Mott the Hoople.

Second “sentence.” First. This station always just happens to forget that there are a bunch of college stations in Boston that get to new music well in before it does. I remember back in my day, which according to the FNX definition of new must have been ten minutes ago, but we’re actually talking about 1993, WZBC was the only station playing P.J. Harvey when she was on Too Pure. Then she got a deal with Island or Electra or whatever, and you know who was told it was okay to play her. ZBC was sponsoring her first Boston show, a show in which anybody in Boston who had bought tickets had heard her from a cd they bought on their own or from a college radio station, but then at the last minute, when the show was already sold out, that sponsorship was ripped away from ZBC and given to those jerk offs at FNX, who had zilch to do with her success.

2. I was reading on boston.com Mitt Romney is getting all high and mighty about Iran, telling the state of New York for some reason, that if it has any pension funds invested in Iran, it should quickly divest. Wha? Of course this jackass didn’t ask first, he just made the pronouncement to look tough on Iran. I guess he did the same thing in Massachusetts a month ago. Looks like a whistle stop tour of the entire United States is in order, to keep pension funds from out of Persian Rugs. Will somebody from New York please come out with the figure (I’m betting 0%) of exactly how much of New York state employees’ pension funds go to Iran, so he can be publicly humiliated.

The best part of the article though is the last paragraph:

Last month, Romney called for economic sanctions against Iran “at least as severe” as those imposed on South Africa during its apartheid era, in an effort to isolate the Central Asian nation and convince it to give up its pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

Note to Mitt, South Africa developed nukes in large part because they felt themselves internationally isolated. From an aritcle on fas.org by Waldo Stumpf called BIRTH AND DEATH OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAMME:

Increasing international restrictions on the supply of conventional arms against South Africa, primarily due to its internal policies, also made the argument that the country virtually had no alternative but to develop its own nuclear deterrent to counter an external threat, probably convincing to the Government of the time.

These narcissistic pols spend more time studying their own image than real issues. I know I am not saying anything new to anybody. We all want them dead, but are too afraid to overthrow the government in the name of common sense. As a fellow coward, I offer these little bits of hypocrisy as entertaining observances and nothing more.

We took Hazel to the Please Touch Museum in Philly this past weekend and she had a blast. The only problem was, or is, that now she has a fever, and we can’t help but wonder, Ali Larijani and I, whether she picked it up at the Please Touch Museum. When you think about it, Please Touch pretty much means Please Spread Sickness when you go there in the middle of winter. Or as I like to say Disease Touch.

You get an interesting assortment of people at the Please Touch Museum. I saw a woman completely covered in a burqua/chador, I can never tell the difference. She also had a sling with a kid in it.

Then there was the father and son team who had this exchange:

Dad whips out a cell phone and snaps a picture of his son, who is a little too old for the please touch museum. We’ll say 11ish.

Dad (with strong Mid Atlantic accent): Ha, I got you.

Son: Well, I got plenty of you when you’re drunk.

I guess we were somewhere in between the abstentious Muslim and the drunk dad, probably closer to the drunk dad, to be honest, although he was wearing a Maryland Terps hat, something I can never do now that BC is in the ACC. I will not be mentioning what happened last night, if you are looking to rub it in, oh all right I will. What is going on?!? I know they weren’t really supposed to beat UNC and Duke, and that Virginia Tech is a good team, but three loses in a row is hard to take, especially when I think they’ll need 20 wins to get in. So there you have it. I am nervous. The last thing I want is to see Jared Dudley end his collegiate career in the NIT.

But back to more happier subjects, like my kid picking up a disease at the please touch museum. I should probably go check on her…

She’s still out there hacking away at the ice on the sidewalk. I heard the city is cracking down on Roslindale residents for having the iciest sidewalks by handing out tickets, so I gave Hazel a little chisel and told her it was a game. Kids are so gullible. God love ‘em!

I don’t know if it’s a reaction to the way BC is playing right now, or whether I am actually really getting too interested in the team, but one of their top recruits for next year, this kid named Rakim Sanders (not nearly as cool a name as one of there other recruits Biko Paris, but still pretty cool. Can you not fall in love with the future of this team just based on their names. Josh Southern is a cool name too, but Biko Paris is one I wish I made up.), is on a high school team in Rhode Island, and I am tempted to go down and have a look. We’ll see. It would take a lot of explaining to Ali Larijani. I don’t think she’d be too enthused with the idea.

Oh well, you never know with my charming ways.

Having made the trip from Boston down to suburban Philly well over a million times now, I think I can safely say I am an expert on all things Connecticut and New Jersey.  I mention this because I have lately been listening to a lot of the band Wrens, who are quintessential Jersey.  What do I mean by that?  Well, I am sure you’ve seen Sopranos, and have your own vague understanding of what it is like to live in New Jersey from that.  Some of the songs from the album The Meadowlands remind me of the Sopranos, those prototypical New Jerseians. 
 
My guess is that Christopher would really dig this album.  It very much rocks, and is perfect for getting pumped up when you have to go out and do a killing.  Not that all people from Jersey are killers, but I can assure you from peeping into other cars on the Garden State Parkway that a lot are. 
 
You can’t understand a lot of the words on this album, which I think is for the best.  In one of the songs where you can catch a verse or two (“Happy”), they come across as very sappy.  Skip that song, unless you find yourself especially moved by lyrics from bands like Seam.  It’s a shame, because the song would otherwise be great if they were singing about something else, something I don’t know, a little more Jersey.
 
Let’s go shoot some gangsters,
Guys from Johnny Sack’s crew! 
Kablammo—Kablammo!
Tony sent me—
 
Aside from that song, I have really been hooked on the other songs.  Sometimes the inaudible singer sounds to me very much like another largely inaudible singer I used to listen to, that being the guy from one of my favorite all time bands Metal Flake Mother.  One of the guys from this band went on to be part of Squirrel Nut Zippers, who were kind of big for a while.  That was a good band, but Metal Flake Mother was a great band.  To the best of my knowledge they only had one album, which I listened to 2322 times during the summer of 1992 (a very close second was the Television Personalities’ The Painted Word).  Nobody I knew had heard about them really, by the Carolinians I knew adopted a reverential attitude towards them.  Apparently they were even better live, which sucks, because I never got to see them.  They opened for Cracker that summer but it was a 21+ show.  I was bummed.
 
You’ll note that I have spoken at length about some bands and I have yet to attempt to really describe them.  I don’t believe in that shit.  If you want some jerk-off typing variations of the words: “conveyers of pure pop confection,” “pop sensibility,” or whatever, tough luck.
 
One more thing, it wouldn’t be fair of me to mention a good New Jersey band without reminding the reader that The Feelies are the best ever band from Jersey.
 
A few notes on baseball:
 
If you are looking for a team to pull for this year, go with the Phillies.  This year’s team is the best they’ve ever had.  I can hear the grumbling about ’80, but after you see what Cole Hamels has up his sleeve (the second best left arm in baseball) you’ll all be converted.  I expect the congratulatory emails to start flooding in by June.  Sorry Mets fans, your rotation cannot compete with ours.  I know this is nothing new, and that a lot of people are picking the Phils this year, but even the people who are, I think, are neglecting Hamels.  Sure they think he is good, but I am here to tell you that he is more than good, he will be fantastic.  I am confidently predicting a sub three era and at least 18 wins.  You heard it here first. 
 
As always, I am hoping that my distant cousin, Mark Prior, comes back from injuries this year, and shakes things up in the central. 

I guess it turns out that I am not as busy as I had been over the past few days, so, that leaves some time for the old Commodore64. Today we’re playing SuperBowl Sunday, some game I downloaded online a few years ago. The 1985 New Orleans Saints versus the 1983 Los Angeles Raiders. There is a weird glitch in the game that makes Jim Plunkett throw tons of interceptions. I am the Saints.

I watched some teevee last night. We watched the end of this show called My Name is Earl. I liked the fact that the main guy kept stealing stuff. I didn’t watch too close to be honest. It was about a peeping Tom and getting chased by a one legged woman. A fair amount of time was spent in a trailer park. Is there anything funnier than people who live in trailer homes? Maybe refugee camps, but for some reason, nobody has thought of that angle yet. Makes you wonder.  

Then we watched The Office. My buddy Clark had previously loaned me the first four episodes of this show, which I thought were hilarious, but last night’s show was only kind of funny. I like how some people make a point of saying the English version of the show is better. I only saw one episode of that, and it was funny, but we all know the truth about people who like English stuff better than American stuff: if the Revolutionary War were held today, they would be Tories.

I saw some ad for the American version of the BBC, and their obnoxious tagline was something like “The best station in America!” Excuse me, but last time I checked, ESPN2 was the best station in America. You have to hand it to the Brits though, having the audacity to champion their culture when they live next store to the French.  That’s like me standing next to Jared Dudley and bragging about how I scored 22 points in a junior high basketball game in 1987 (true). There is absolutely no comparison in greatness, since to compare greatness, both sides need to have a small degree of it. You would think, that if England were so rich in cultural capital, that writers and artists would flock to it. It’s interesting to note that some of the greatest writers in the English language, headed not to England, but to France (Beckett, Stein, Hemingway [I'm not really crazy about him, but since he supports my argument...]), whereas when a French writer like Zola is forcibly exiled to England, he promptly dies, like a flower cut down by the frost, the frost of little or no imagination.

Oh, I’m sorry, England. But maybe if your commercials weren’t so imperially obnoxious, I’d be nice.

I have some very happy news to report about my wife. I have come up with a new name for her, and not only that, it is going to garner more than a few interesting google hits to my site. Here’s how it all works. Originally she asked me to change her name to prevent people from stalking her. Never mind that I constantly tell her she is beautiful, to which she sorrowfully replies “nobody is attracted to me but you.” However, when it comes to the internet she’s worried about stalkers, which only proves that I am right, because if she wasn’t pretty she’d be worried about Charlie Weis’ cosmetic surgeons finding her. So, I changed her name to Bambi Lundquist, which I thought was a great name, and it was for a few weeks.

Until she visited the site, that is. Like I mentioned before, I have to change her name again, and this time I have opted for something that will not only please my wife, but drive up hits to my website. Her new name is Ali, which, unlike Bambi, is a nice name, heard often among the best of society.

Q: But Prior, how’s that name going to drive up hits to your website?

A: Quite simple, reader (note: singular number), her last name is going to be Larijani. When you put the names together what do you get? Ali Larijani, that globe trotting nuclear negotiator guy from Iran who is always in the papers.

Q: But Prior, Ali Larijani is all over the world wide web, your site is going to be so far down the list that nobody will see it.

A: Yes, Ali Larijani is on a ton of websites (679,000 today), but they are all serious sites. Supposing somebody does the google search “Ali Larijani” farts. Of course, I know better than to write about my wife farting.  She doesn’t fart anyway. It’s the way the search engine reads the pages, a fart placed here followed be an Ali Larinjani placed there and — voilà— I’m on top of the heap.

Q: I have no further questions.  This is a completely brilliant idea.

No kidding.  You just know that somewhere along the line— he’s only human after all— during one of those endless meetings that go something to the tune of “please don’t use nuclear power,” “no,” “come on…” “no,” at some point Ali Larinjani is going to have to crack one, if he hasn’t already. Whether or not he can pull it off without making a sound doesn’t really matter, as everybody in the room will smell it, and, since everybody relies on the internet for information these days, instead of relying on the traditional, but fallible, “whoever smelt it, dealt it” they’ll google it, their suspicions leading them to type the quotation above.

What am I suggesting? I am suggeting that the views and opinions expressed here are the future views and opinions of nuclear negotiators the world over.

Sorry to have dropped off the face of the earth, but I have been busy working. Lots of work, little time to come here and make smartass cracks about everything. I was really having a tough time with a “project” but I think that I finally got my bearings on it. This is a great feeling, even though it is nothing more than relief. What is relief compared to the joy of supremacy, mastery, whatever. No, thanks, I’ll settle with just getting by.

I did get a chance to go to Harvard Square the other night to score some Luxemburgers for my wife. She is in the process of changing her name for the third time. I have been instructed not to mention her old name, since it embarasses her. It’s confusing for me too, although I have to say it does add variety. If I can’t be a polygamist, the confusion arising from my wife’s multiple personalities at least sometimes gives me the look and feel of one, at least inwardly. Don’t get to the square too often anymore. It was nice to see a crisp new Citizen’s bank in place of where all of those grubby little shops used to be. I also noted that Newbury Comics was pretty deserted, probably owing to music downloading. My how things change. For old times sake, I grabbed a schedule from the Brattle (even though I can get it online now). Nothing good was playing. Passing the ART I made the observation (to no one in particular) that almost all of the promo posters were of semi naked bodies.

In my day…